Setsubun’s main attraction is mamemaki, or ‘bean throwing’. This is achieved by going to a (jinja) temple with dried beans (fukumame, lit. ‘luck beans’) and throwing them to the ground. Then you would shout “Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi!” (“Devil(s) out, good luck in!”) and pick up and eat your age worth of beans (i.e. 23 years old = 23 beans). The beans are said to cleanse the bad luck and force the demons with the bad luck out. Eating the beans is supposed to give you good luck. There was also the ritual of cooking sardines and hanging the heads outside the household.

Unfortunately, many of these traditions are not upheld. Some places, especially in the Kansai region, uphold many of the traditions including mamemaki, hanging sardine heads and holy outside the household, eating a long strip of maki-zushi (called ehoumaki) which is said to bring good luck, and going to shines, temples and even events with entertainment. However, in most places substitutions are made, beans (or peanuts) are merely eaten with a meal, the maki-zushi is brought from a convenience store. I had school lunch today where I received some fukumame beans and also had sardine as my entrée.

It’s nice to take part in these events, even if they aren’t celebrated like they used to be. Many of the kids at school seemed confused at getting fukumame, and I think many of them didn’t know what Setsubun was.

The reason I’m bringing this up? Being back in Japan I’ve started to notice a few eating habits of the Japanese, and I thought I’d share my findings.

1) The variety show

One of the first major differences you’ll notice when eating in Japan (aside from the different food), is the way the food comes. In England and most other western cultures, we tend to have our food in one container, usually in a bowl or on a plate.

Japan has a tendency to ship all it’s food to the connoisseur in small portions. Not only does this make an interesting change of pace (for us foreigners at least), but you soon realise how many different things are passed your way. Entrees, side dishes, pickled vegetables, salads, rice, all these come in small but carefully constructed portions. This happens in restaurants, and even in family homes. Most days you’ll get to try something new. It’s kind of like being at a permanent party buffet.

I suppose that despite being harder to manage if you live alone (lets face it, a simple donburi is much easier), its still a lot of fun, and it also allows (and encourages) more variety in your diet and probably more of the vitamins/minerals/vegetables and good stuff you need every day.

Mind you, I wouldn’t want to do the washing up…

2) Grapes of doom!

Your average Japanese Joe will happily scarf down a variety of foods with their outer layer on, whole shrimps with the shell and head still on, fish with the head/skin/bones et. al., octopus with the skin still attached (with it’s mucas-like membrane, yuk!). Nothing phases them.

Except grape skins of course.

Yes, it seems the Japanese populace cannot seem to devour a grape with the skin still attached. I have watched many a time, and probably close to 95% of the people I’ve seen take the grape and peel it until it is just the fleshy fruit, and then eat it, discarding the skin. It boggles the mind, I mean I know some people don’t like the skins, but this is a huge shift in numbers. You’d think with the things they eat, grape skins would be way down the list.

On a related note potato skins (sweet and normal) seem to be a no-no too. Yet, I’ve seen my students eat (to try and gross me out, mind) orange peel and banana skin. It’s strange to say the least.

3) Normal is as normal does

(Stolen from Peter Chong’s site via Google images!)

If you’re not familiar with Japan, you’ve probably no doubt heard of her ‘strange’ and ‘exotic’ cuisine. People will have no doubt said something along the lines of, “(eww), they eat raw fish all the time.” Whilst you do get raw fish sometimes with sushi and shashimi (as well as raw egg, raw beef, raw horse, raw vegetables, raw chicken to name a few), it’s not as common as some people think. However, these do make a part of the Japanese diet, and it’s interesting to note what is normal here compared to what is normal back home.

In a typical Japanese household, you’ll most likely get rice, miso soup and some kind of fish most days. The rice/miso soup combination is popular as breakfast. Yes, breakfast.

In fact, rice is usually a 3 times a day thing. On of the good things about the average Japanese diet is that despite all the crap that they have, they seem to balance it out with an incredibly balanced amount of veg and other healthy things.

4) Convieniently bad for you

OK, not so healthy stuff. Walk into any convenience store and you’ll find the magazines, toiletries and stuff. Everything after that is food and drink. Frozen ready-meal type food, soft drinks, beer, spirits, sweets, crisps (potato chips), pot noodles, beer snacks, canned coffee with enough sugar (real or fake) to kill a horse, cakes filled with cream, bread with chocolate, bread with strawberry cream, bread with cream, sandwiches with strawberries and cream in them, bread with fried foods in them, ready meals and bento, and a section of fried foods by the checkout.

The local convenience store is a dieters NIGHTMARE. With all this bad food at their disposal (and they buy it, I see them! I has proof!), it begs the question, “How do they stay so thin?”.

Aside from thinking the population of Japan has outgrown the need for food and merely puts this on for show, I’d say it’s a combination of other eating habits and factors of their lives. Always moving, exercising a lot, eating a lot of good stuff with the bad (vegatables and fruit for example), and most importantly (I think), a good dose of willpower (or upbringing) to not eat the junk food all the time.

5) Natto

I was hesitant to put a picture of natto on the site because it repels me so much. As one of my friends commented about natto, “believes natto is so terrible it awoke his mental powers and was then offensive to all six senses”. Never was a truer statement uttered.

Natto, for those with the stomach to learn more after seeing the picture, are fermented soy-beans.

Aside from the horrid look, they smell like an 17th century French cheese market, and have the texture of, well, you figure it out. It’s all sticky and stringy and, well ewww.

Aside from that, if you can get over the initial look/smell/texture, then natto is actually palatable. In fact, they can be pretty nice. I just can’t get over the whole look/smell/texture issue myself.

And what the hell is this? Ewww, no, no, no, no, no-no-no NO!

(for those who can’t read it [although it is in English as well], that says ‘natto ice cream’.

*shudder*

It’s strange, I know, but I’m going to go through some banana related things in Japan you may or may not know. Regardless, it’s bound to be an education for you! Welcome to my top ten list of banana related Japan!

#1 Magical Banana

Magical banana is an pretty old game show and a game you can play with your friends. It’s a word association game, kinda structured like Shiritori. You’ve probably seen it before, on MTV’s Dirty Sanchez, although they play with canes and pain.

The premise of the game is simple. Someone starts saying the word ‘magical banana’. The next person then has to think of something to do with that. Then the next person has to think of something to do with the thing just said, and so on. For example, with two people:

Player 1: “Magical Banana!”

Player 2: “When I think of bananas, I think of yellow!”

Player 1: “When I think of yellow, I think of sunflowers”

Player 2: “When I think of sunflowers, I think of bees”

Player 1: “When I think of bees, I think of honey!”

Player 2: “When I think of honey, I think of…erm…” (and the game is over because they couldn’t think of something fast enough!)

An hesitation or an incorrect answer ends the current game, usually with some kind of penalty involved.

It’s a quick game, made even quicker in Dirty Sanchez where single word answers, a short time limit and getting hit in the head with a piece of cane for wrong answers make the cut.

Here’s a video of the original gameshow in Japanese. Unfortunately i’m not gonna sub it, because there’s a LOT, but you’ll get the gist hopefully.

#2 Banana King

Japan has all sorts of crazy products, with equally crazy adverts to promote them. Sometimes, even the simplest things, like bananas, need an extra boost of ‘crazy’ to help them sell above the norm. Nothing compared to the Dole adverts i’ll show later, this is the Banana King. He is king of bananas, and he declares it to the world. This vid in particular is a song that is pretty damn catchy, but it’s a great example on how un-serious Japan is, and how it builds up it’s brand names on crazy concepts. The whole thing is at Europeon/American standards of crazy, but the scary thing is that this is the norm in Japan.

This is actually one of the Banana king adverts I found. The one I saw today was a newer one. This one is pretty tame compared to the weird Japanese adverts that are on TV, even today. This has actually been turned into a full song, those who want more information go here.

Wanna know what they’re saying? Then check out these lyrics. I’ve tried my best to figure out what they said. Anyone who wants to correct me, please do so.

オレの皮で転ぶなよ！
“Don’t fall on my skin!”

バナナの王様、
バナナの王様、
完熟王！
“The banana king,
the banana king,
ripe enough for a king!”

完熟王！
“Ripe enough for a king!”

食べられちゃった．．．
“he’s got himself eaten…”

おいしいよ！
バナナの王様、
完熟王！
“They’re delicious!
The banana king,
ripe enough for a king!

(Some of you may notice the kanji on the pacakaging is 甘熟王 not 完熟王. This is a play on words. Kanjyuku (完熟) means to be fully ripened. Ama[i] (甘[い]) means to be sweet. Ama[i] can also be read as ‘kan’, so it’s replace the first part, to imply not only is it ripened, but it is sweet too. A kind of Japanese play on words.)

#3 Banana armour

Japan is full of crazy, unnecessary products. Some are quaint, some make you think “What was going through the designers mind”, or “who would think this is useful”. The banana guard is one of these products.

Sure, for little kids, it helps to keep banana off of their schoolbooks and in their bag and stuff. I’m sure that many parents will tell of the horrors of having to clear out mushed fruit out of their child’s bag when they get home from school. However, the idea of having a separate container for the banana seems a little inappropriate. It’s like Japan’s need to have everything packaged twice over using all sorts of different materials. It’s just unneeded.

Unfortunately for some companies, such as the makers of the Banana Bunker, the product in various ‘hot’ colours look like something else.

#4 Ridiculously expensive fruit

Sometimes when at work, someone will come around with a box of apples or a big bag of pears and start handing out pieces of fruit on little sticks, much like party appetizers. This seems, quaint at first to the untrained eye, a nice small gesture.

When you’ve been here for a little while, you grab at these opportunities and realise something; these guys must be loaded!

Because my friends, fruit in Japan is expensive. I’m not talking a little bit, like “man, these apples are 10p more expensive that the other week!” kinda expensive. I’m talking about 3-4 apples costing about £10 expensive. I’m talking about a watermelon costing more that it does to fill up your car expensive. If you like fruit and you aren’t wealthy, don’t come to Japan!

Even bananas, which are such a staple fruit back home, are kinda expensive. Sure, $4-5 for a bunch of three bananas ain’t that bad, but when you see they’re really quite small an already over ripe, then you realise that the value of these things just went plummeting down.

#5 The Morning Banana Diet

Ah, the trend that started it all. Millions of Japanese women (and men for that matter) ran out to stores and supermarkets to buy up bananas after it was discovered that they were part of a miracle diet. And by discovered, I mean it came from a post on the Japanese website Mixi, after one of the posters claimed they had shed a number of pounds using this simple but effective diet. Rumours of it’s supposed effectiveness spread like wild fire. Hundreds of books have been written since.

So what is the secret to this diet. It’s simple. Have a banana for breakfast, a glass of room temp. water, don’t eat desserts or sweets and go to bed before midnight. Simply put, the premise for this ‘diet’ is to eat breakfast, drink water and don’t snack, the basic principles of any weight loss scheme. It has nothing to do with the bananas, and in fact they could be replaced with much better and (in Japan anyways), much cheaper produce.

[Although, bananas are good for breakfast. They have a lot of potassium and also digest really fast, so they are a great source of good, fast energy.]

#6 Banana adverts:

I don’t know what sane person thinks these adverts are a good idea. Sure, as a crazy parody every once in a while they can be affective. But in Japan they are so common, it’s just not right. It scares me that it’s not only the advert producers that come up with these ideas, but also the executives of the company and the broadcasting companies that think they are suitable to sell the product. One thing for sure, they do stick in your mind.

Strange dole advert.

Hmmmm, OK…

WTF Dole advert.

Wait…what?!

Alvin and the Chipmunks sing ‘Japanese Banana’

I don’t know, this seems ever so slightly racist to me. I think it’s the stereotypical Japanese music that they sing to. And apparently Japan doesn’t even have bananas.

Suggestive advert that isn’t selling bananas

OK this is Korean, but Olympus is Japanese and she’s singing about bananas .

#7 Banana Street English lesson

Welcome to Banana Street, where two misfits dress up like Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street and give out free English lessons. Unfortunately, these English lessons are just an excuse to make fun of the unsuspecting clients by taking advantage of their lack of English knowledge and making them say outrageous things. Even though it’s in Japanese, most of you should get the drift of things. It’s hilarious to say the least.

If you’re wondering about the happy birthday part, they say ‘tsuufuu’ instead of ‘to you’, which is a kind of pun. 通風 translates to gout. Also note, for those of you who speak or are learning Japanese, you may have noticed that the subtitles are in a mix of kanji, hiragana and katakana. This is intentional, it is to express that the person is speaking in a strange way. This is often used when subtitling foreigners, like Mr. James from McDonalds.

#8 Date Masamune Banana picture taking

Date Masamune is a pretty well known figure in Japan, especially in the north east of Tohoku. He’s the samurai who became famous and pretty much established the city of Sendai. He’s also pretty famous for having a crescent moon shape on the front of his helmet, which people often mistake (probably intentionally) for a banana. Hence, when it comes to celebrations and festivals that contain Date Masamune, you’ll often find people taking pictures of each other, holding bananas to their foreheads, in order to mimick Date Masamune and his crescent moon helmet. Here’s a picture of yours truly at the Date Masamune festival in Iwadeyama, Miyagi prefecture.

#9 Banana themed products

Alongside the banana guard, Japan has come up with many other banana themed products. Here are but a few of them:
 

Banana juice packaging

Now this I can dig. Not only is the packaging, by Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa, pretty awesome, but it’s BANANA JUICE!! I like this very much. More of this Japan, MORE!
 

Infinite banana

Hehe, OK, so I’ve tried the infinite bubble wrap toy, and it’s a blast (but nothing beats the real thing!). This, however, I understand, but it still sits a little weirdly. I suppose if you like that sort of thing.
 

Cellfoam banana holder

OK, I’m at a loss here. Simply put, the only reason you’d want one of these was if you had wacky stuff in your apartment, and it was all for show. End of. And the terrible pun of Cellfoam (cell ‘phone’ for those who don’t get it) is unforgivable. [OK, I'm not sure this is Japanese, but it fits in with the theme of things]

#10 Tokyo Banana

The Tokyo Banana is a type of sweet made in, you guessed it, Toyko. It’s a pretty popular omiyage (souvenir) to bring home if ever you’re in Tokyo. It’s like a sponge cake with a banana flavoured cream inside. Some have pieces of banana in there too. Americans, apparently it’s like a banana flavoured Twinkie, whatever the hell that is. The company that makes them also has other themed desserts, such as the Black Bear (i think) (黒べエ) and the Cheese Rabbit (チーズうさぎ).

勉強になるなぁ！

This doesn’t mean you must get everything prepared beforehand: – okonomiyaki is one of those foods like an omelette, where you can stick leftovers and all sorts on it. Part of the fun is finding combinations of food to go on as toppings. So long as you have the basics (flour, water, egg, cabbage) it’s do-able!

So here’s my take on it. If you want to try it out, you don’t have to follow my example to a ‘T’. Simply substitute what you have left over (that isn’t to say stick something like chocolate on it! Unless, well, you want to…), find things in your fridge or cupboards that go well together. Meats, fish, vegetables all fit in, even some fruit is OK. Look around the net, or experiment!

Hiroshima-yaki uses cabbage and batter, as well as yaki-soba and a fried egg. I used this as a base to make mine. [As you may notice, unlike the Hiroshima-style, I mix the batter in with the cabbage. You can do this, or you can mix everything with the batter and put the cabbage in as a layer of toppings separately (maybe add some batter over the top to keep it together).]　And yes, the spiced rum was an odd choice, but hey, it worked [and I like rum, so what you gonna do? ( ^ _ ^ )b]

Ok, so my ingredients were:

- 1 cup plain flour
- 1 cup water
- 3 eggs
- Two handfuls of chopped cabbage and leek
- 1 level tablespoon of sesame seeds
- 1 teaspoon or mirin
- 1 screwcap of Captain Mogan’s Spiced rum “Yarrgh!”
- Half a bundle of soba noodles
- 1 small tin of crab meat
- Tomato Ketchup
- Worcester sauce
- Mayonaise
- Salt & pepper to taste

1. In a medium sized bowl mix the flour, water, one egg, sesame seeds, mirin, spiced rum and salt & pepper. Mix until you have a batter. Drain the crab meat and add half to the batter.

2. Cook the soba for a few minutes in boiling water. Drain them, and then put them in a frying pan with some olive oil. When they start to brown, take them out and put them in a bowl.

3. Fry the other two eggs in the frying pan. Make sure they are broken up and mixed together. This will make the base of your okonomiyaki, so spread the egg out to the desired size. Add another egg if necessary. Cook one side, then flip it and cook the other side for literally a few seconds. Take it off and put it on a small plate.

4. Pour the batter onto the frying pan. Make sure you’ve oiled the pan up with some olive oil so it’s lubricated well. Cook on one side, then either flip it, or stick it under a grill. Add the rest of the crab meat to the pan next to the batter to cook it for a while.

5. Take out the batter and put it on a plate. Put the egg back in (with the side cooked least facing down). Add the yaki-soba and the cooked crab meat on top. Then stick the batter on top of that. Wedge a spatula underneath it and put the whole lot on a plate (hard without a wide spatula!).

6. Mix even amounts of Tomato Ketchup and Worcester sauce to make the sauce, then spoon it on the batter and spread it out over the top. I also added a little spiced rum and mirin to the sauce. (You could also cook the sauce in a small pan first if you like). Add some mayo on top and then serve!

いただきます！

So what is it exatcly? Okonomiyaki is like an omelette or a pizza. The compound for okonomiyaki お好み焼き has the kanji for suki 好き and the kanji for yaki 焼き; basically, what you like fried / griddled / toasted / bbq’d, etc. It’s a bit of a vague term, but it’s used to describe a type of omelette made from flour and water (and sometimes egg) that contains cabbage as a base, then has toppings or ingredients of your choice. It’s not really as varied as pizza in terms of toppings, but you get the drift.

Okonomiyaki comes from the Kansai area of Japan, mainly in Osaka. Osaka is famous for a lot of Japan’s “take-out” style cuisine, such as okonomiyaki, takoyaki, ramen. Much like yakiniku, okonomiyaki is a dish you get involved with. Most restaurants have tables with a teppan cooking area. You get given the ingredients prepared, and you mix it and cook it yourself. Ok, there’s not much cooking skill needed, all you need top do is make sure it doesn’t burn. But it adds to the experience.

There are two famous types of okonomiyaki: Osaka okonomiyaki and Hiroshima okonomiyaki.

[Photo by Elijah in Osaka]

Osaka-yaki is the traditional kind; the ingredients and toppings are mixed together and it makes a much thinner omelette, topped off with an okonomiyaki sauce, mayo and sometimes bonito flakes.

 

[Photo by potatomato.com]

Hiroshima-yaki on the otherhand, tend to layer the ingredients. There’s a lot more cabbage in the batter, and they also add fried egg, and yakisoba. They are usually topped off with an okonomiyaki sauce and some extra toppings. Hiroshima-yaki tend to be much taller than Osaka-yaki.

My favourite way is to make it Osaka style. I actually like the Hiroshima style more, but there’s so much there that a lot gets wasted, I just can’t eat it! Osaka style are also easier to make at home, as well as being quicker to prepare.

Traditional ingredients include using dashi stock, bonito flakes, an okonomiyaki sauce (similar to the tonkatsu / bulldog sauces) Japanese mayonaise and grated yam. However, much to my dissapointment, Japanese cooking isn’t as widespread over here in the UK, so i’m gonna talk you through my recipe which you can find ingredients for in any supermarket.

Ok, so the ingredients you will need are:

For the batter:

- Cabbage (pre-shredded is good. I use a mix that has leek in it as well. I love leek!)
- 1 egg
- 1 cup of plain white flour
- 1/2 cup water
- 3 slices of bacon, or a meat/fish equivalent
- A pinch of salt
- (optional) leek

For the sauce:

- Tomato Ketchup
- Worcester sauce
- Mayonaise

You’ll need a frying pan and some cooking oil (I use extra virgin olive oil). A grill is also useful as well.

I tend to wing my batter. It should be a little thin, but if you are a bit worried the first few times, add a little more flour. Adding another egg may help it to form as well.

1. Shred the cabbage (and leek if you have it) into thin strips. You’re looking at getting them about 2 inches by 1cm. Put this in a measuring jug or bowl or something.

2. Add to it the egg, the flour, the water and the salt. Mix this all together with a spoon until you have a batter. Don’t worry about lumps, just try your best to beat them out. Egg should be kind of whisked.

3. Put a teaspoon of oil into a hot frying pan, and add the rashers of bacon. Cook them until they are browning, then take them out and cut them into chunks. Put them back in the pan and spread them around the pan evenly.

4. There should still be some oil in the pan you used to fry the bacon. Add a little more if necessary, then add the batter over the top of the bacon.

5. Wait for the batter to cook a little bit, make sure your grill is set to high. When the edges start to solidify, use a spatula to lift up the edges a little. When the main part starts to solidify, get the spatula underneath as much as you can without breaking the batter. If you can get it loose do so, or try to give the pan a little shake.

6. Stick the pan under the grill. Cook the top until it starts to brown. The whole okonomiyaki should be solid now, so if you want, take it out of the grill and back onto the hob. Then flip it over. This makes it easier to apply the sauce, because you now have a surface formed in the shape of the frying pan.

7. Mix up the sauce. You need equal parts of the tomato ketchup and Worcester sauce. I actually use a little more TK though. Spoon the sauce over the okonomiyaki, then do the same with the mayo.

Serve up and enjoy. I find it nice to have with milk. This is definately a dish you can experiment with. Try adding a stock instead of water. Maybe add more vegetables like courgette or red onion, or add yakisoba and an egg on top. As the name implies, It’s up to you!

[photos by myself, greg.abstrakt.ch, Elijah in Osaka and potatomato.com - I'll stop using other people's photographs when I get to Japan ( T . T ). Thank you everyone! Gimme an e-mail if you want me to take anything down.]